Murderers in Mausoleums: What Counts Is Your Blood

Travel Books: Jeffrey Tayler's latest book is a masterful guide to the divisions that define so much of human civilization. Jason Daley explains.

01.26.09 | 11:00 AM ET

My grandfather is buried in an Irish cemetery. Actually, the cemetery isn’t exclusively Irish, but the corner where the first generation of my immigrant family lies might as well be—like an abstract map of Europe, to the south lies a cluster of Italians, the English are close by and to the southeast a row of slumping sandstone crosses marks the resting place of German nuns, a stark waypoint that reminds me when to turn right during visits.

As a young child, I thought the ethnic division of the graveyard was hysterically absurd. My little Catholic school class was an ancestry grab bag—among my 30 or so classmates there were living descendants from every surname in that graveyard, plus children of Jewish, African-American and even Iranian ancestry. I tried to imagine the sorts of violent insults during my grandfather’s time that could have divided the neighbors of my little Midwestern city so absolutely that they’d decided to pass eternity segregated from everyone except blood. Even now, it’s hard to imagine a time when the fact that my ancestors came from Cork, or Swaziland, or Lithuania could make much difference.

I’m not alone in my bewilderment. For many Americans, especially Boomers and beyond, ethnicity has become nothing more than a party trick (race, on the other hand ... well we’re still working on that). During a lull in the chit-chat some dull conversationalist is bound to ask a pretty girl, “So, Wysocki. Is that Polish?” Which sets off a round of geographic spin-the-bottle before the host turns up the music. But in large swaths of the world, ethnicity is still the better part of destiny. The bank of the river you plow, the side your great grandfather took during the war, and the style of dumplings you eat are still integral parts of personal identity and politics and are often a matter of life and death.

Which is why, for Americans, understanding the world on its own terms takes a little hand-holding. Veteran foreign correspondent (and World Humcontributor) Jeffrey Tayler is a masterful guide to the divisions and rivalries that define so much of human civilization. In his latest book, Murderers in Mausoleums: Riding the Back Roads of Empire Between Moscow and Beijing, Tayler tours the Russian and Chinese spheres of influence to see which way the winds of change are blowing almost two decades after the end of the Cold War. His 7,200-mile, three-month journey takes him through the unraveling ethnic quilt of the Caucuses, through an increasingly authoritarian Central Asia and to the outer limits of China, where the ragged edges of history are being smoothed over by a newfound prosperity. But the central question behind Tayler’s journey is an essentially American one. After watching former Soviet republics and even Russia itself flirt with Western-style reforms and democracy through much of the 1990s, only to see many of those gains reversed, do we still have a chance? “Is the West, across the strategically vital expanses of Russia and Central Asia,” asks Tayler, “set to lose the new Great Game?”

Eschewing politicians and policy wonks, Tayler, who has been living in Moscow for the last decade, takes his question to the masses, traveling by train and taxi, collecting opinions from the, often, hard-drinking locals he comes across. Tayler’s writing is often stunningly beautiful, and he has a knack for finding interesting, and generous, friends. But a straight answer to his question isn’t easily forthcoming. In the Russian Caucuses, centuries-old rivalries kept in check by the Communists are flaring up in Chechnya and Dagestan, while racial tensions between ethnic Russians and Caucasians are leading to open violence. “One spark and Russia will explode and disintegrate along ethnic lines. There will be chaos here,” explains a Cossack filmmaker in the early days of Tayler’s trip.

Democracy and human rights aren’t even up for discussion. In Karbardino-Balkaria, a small Muslim Russian Republic, Tayler finds contradictions everywhere—men calling for religious uprisings while saving money to buy Infinitis. It’s a place where the democracy of the Yeltsin years is seen as a nationwide scam that brought nothing but a flowering of strip clubs while Putin’s strong-man power grabs are hailed as stabilizing influences.

2 Comments for Murderers in Mausoleums: What Counts Is Your Blood

This sounds like a very interesting read. I too have wondered why so many Americans expect the world to be just like us when so many other countries have such rich and interesting histories that outdate ours significantly. I enjoy reading books such as this one where locals from other countries get to speak their mind from their point of view.

Igor
02.02.09 | 5:19 PM ET

It is typical of Americans not only to expect others to be like them, but more annoyingly to romanticize the “rich and interesting histories that outdate ours significantly”. Let’s not wax poetic about unyielding age old ethnic hatreds, barbaric practices, merciless autocratic regimes, and nations and cultures so traumatized by centuries of wars, massacres, government repression, corruption and incompetence that they seek refuge in a collective paranoid schizophrenic psychosis. The West (and particularly America) might be destined to fail in our attempts to bring tolerance, decency, and yes democracy to these regions, yet let us refrain from denigrating these gifts of our civilization which we all to effortlessly enjoy and take for granted, and exalt as “rich” or “quaint” or “interesting” those cultures stuck in the morass of war, poverty, cruelty and medieval barbarism.